John Kennedy
07-02-2006, 02:55 AM
By Steve JamesSat Jul 1, 4:06 AM ET
If you look west from Germany you will see the United States stifling a yawn at the World Cup.
Despite a doubling of television ratings for the first-round matches this month, before the U.S. squad failed miserably, soccer still ranks below televised poker tournaments in a land where baseball, basketball and American football rule.
ABC-TV's average rating of 2.5 for the first eight matches it aired represents barely 8 million viewers in a nation of just under 300 million. Only 3.9 million Americans watched the 2002 World Cup final, which had an audience of 1.1 billion worldwide.
By comparison, nearly 91 million viewers watched this year's Super Bowl, the glitzy climax to the season for North America's home-grown form of football. Nearly 39 million watched the Academy Awards, Hollywood's big night, in March and 36 million tuned in for May's finale of "American Idol," a television talent show.
On ABC's sports cable network, ESPN, which presumably attracts more serious sports fans, the World Cup has had few viewers, averaging around 1.75 million on channels that reach 91 million homes.
No surprise, then, that a poll by the Global Market Insite (GMI) market research service found that only 11 percent of Americans surveyed were "definitely" interested in the World Cup, compared with 45 percent of respondents world-wide.
"Despite an estimated combined $420 million invested in official partnerships by U.S.-based corporations to gain worldwide visibility, the facts don't lie: the U.S. lags significantly behind other countries when it comes to being passionate about 'the beautiful game' of soccer," GMI said.
The poll revealed that 56 percent of Americans did not even know that the 2006 World Cup was taking place in Germany.
HOSTILE COMMENTATORS
Soccer just is not part of the culture in a country that often prides itself on sporting isolationism.
Millions of children play the game in the U.S. but whereas spontaneous soccer breaks out on Rio and Cape Town beaches, or in the alleys of Berlin and Bologna, you will not see youngsters kicking around a ball on the streets of Philadelphia or Memphis.
World governing body FIFA had hoped to boost interest in the game when it awarded the U.S. hosting rights to the 1994 World Cup.
The event attracted the largest average crowds in World Cup history and spawned Major League Soccer which now has 12 teams but has struggled to find a place in the crowded U.S. sports market.
American opinion is still shaped by a handful of sports commentators who can barely hide their hostility to soccer.
Yet, while the U.S. team were competing in their fifth consecutive finals, two long-time opponents of soccer appeared to soften.
First, it was Frank Deford, a Sports Illustrated columnist, who delights in provoking soccer fans with outrageous jibes.
In a National Public Radio commentary, he actually praised the passion of the world's fans, and called soccer players "rock stars of sweat."
The transformation was fleeting, however, as Deford still thinks soccer is not for Americans.
"America is one of the few countries that escaped being infected by the soccer pandemic," Deford went on. There was more interest last month in the professional basketball and hockey playoffs in America, "the only country where soccer is not important," he said.
BRAZILIAN ATHLETICISM
Another apparent convert was Jack Kemp, the former National Football League (NFL) quarterback and Republican presidential candidate, who once called soccer "socialistic and collectivist" during a speech in Congress.
Yet he acknowledged in a posting on his Web site this week that seven or eight of his 16 grandchildren play soccer.
"Watching our USA soccer team tie the Italian team last week and on Sunday watching the athleticism of the Brazilian team, I'm hereby publicly acknowledging that soccer can be interesting to watch," said Kemp.
Unfortunately, he could not resist a late hit.
"I love soccer, but it's still boring," he added.
If a nation's newspapers reflect its thinking, then USA Today has America's attitude to soccer nailed down.
"That Americans have a love-hate relationship with soccer is indisputable," columnist William Mattox Jr. wrote last week. "We love to play the game, or at least to have our children play it. But we hate to watch it.
The newspaper ran letters echoing his comments.
"If America hadn't been founded by the pilgrims leaving...to seek freedom of religion, a few hundred years later America would have been founded by the pilgrims seeking freedom from soccer," wrote Rollie Robinson of Portland, Oregon.
If you look west from Germany you will see the United States stifling a yawn at the World Cup.
Despite a doubling of television ratings for the first-round matches this month, before the U.S. squad failed miserably, soccer still ranks below televised poker tournaments in a land where baseball, basketball and American football rule.
ABC-TV's average rating of 2.5 for the first eight matches it aired represents barely 8 million viewers in a nation of just under 300 million. Only 3.9 million Americans watched the 2002 World Cup final, which had an audience of 1.1 billion worldwide.
By comparison, nearly 91 million viewers watched this year's Super Bowl, the glitzy climax to the season for North America's home-grown form of football. Nearly 39 million watched the Academy Awards, Hollywood's big night, in March and 36 million tuned in for May's finale of "American Idol," a television talent show.
On ABC's sports cable network, ESPN, which presumably attracts more serious sports fans, the World Cup has had few viewers, averaging around 1.75 million on channels that reach 91 million homes.
No surprise, then, that a poll by the Global Market Insite (GMI) market research service found that only 11 percent of Americans surveyed were "definitely" interested in the World Cup, compared with 45 percent of respondents world-wide.
"Despite an estimated combined $420 million invested in official partnerships by U.S.-based corporations to gain worldwide visibility, the facts don't lie: the U.S. lags significantly behind other countries when it comes to being passionate about 'the beautiful game' of soccer," GMI said.
The poll revealed that 56 percent of Americans did not even know that the 2006 World Cup was taking place in Germany.
HOSTILE COMMENTATORS
Soccer just is not part of the culture in a country that often prides itself on sporting isolationism.
Millions of children play the game in the U.S. but whereas spontaneous soccer breaks out on Rio and Cape Town beaches, or in the alleys of Berlin and Bologna, you will not see youngsters kicking around a ball on the streets of Philadelphia or Memphis.
World governing body FIFA had hoped to boost interest in the game when it awarded the U.S. hosting rights to the 1994 World Cup.
The event attracted the largest average crowds in World Cup history and spawned Major League Soccer which now has 12 teams but has struggled to find a place in the crowded U.S. sports market.
American opinion is still shaped by a handful of sports commentators who can barely hide their hostility to soccer.
Yet, while the U.S. team were competing in their fifth consecutive finals, two long-time opponents of soccer appeared to soften.
First, it was Frank Deford, a Sports Illustrated columnist, who delights in provoking soccer fans with outrageous jibes.
In a National Public Radio commentary, he actually praised the passion of the world's fans, and called soccer players "rock stars of sweat."
The transformation was fleeting, however, as Deford still thinks soccer is not for Americans.
"America is one of the few countries that escaped being infected by the soccer pandemic," Deford went on. There was more interest last month in the professional basketball and hockey playoffs in America, "the only country where soccer is not important," he said.
BRAZILIAN ATHLETICISM
Another apparent convert was Jack Kemp, the former National Football League (NFL) quarterback and Republican presidential candidate, who once called soccer "socialistic and collectivist" during a speech in Congress.
Yet he acknowledged in a posting on his Web site this week that seven or eight of his 16 grandchildren play soccer.
"Watching our USA soccer team tie the Italian team last week and on Sunday watching the athleticism of the Brazilian team, I'm hereby publicly acknowledging that soccer can be interesting to watch," said Kemp.
Unfortunately, he could not resist a late hit.
"I love soccer, but it's still boring," he added.
If a nation's newspapers reflect its thinking, then USA Today has America's attitude to soccer nailed down.
"That Americans have a love-hate relationship with soccer is indisputable," columnist William Mattox Jr. wrote last week. "We love to play the game, or at least to have our children play it. But we hate to watch it.
The newspaper ran letters echoing his comments.
"If America hadn't been founded by the pilgrims leaving...to seek freedom of religion, a few hundred years later America would have been founded by the pilgrims seeking freedom from soccer," wrote Rollie Robinson of Portland, Oregon.